The Other Brother by Carole Towriss

Author:Carole Towriss [Towriss, Carole]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Four Diamonds Publishing

Marc slammed the truck into park and jumped out. The elevator doors were crowded, so he searched for the stairwell. He threw open the door and took the steps three at a time.

He stopped at Sarah’s door and tried to calm his breath. After a moment or two, he rapped on the door. “Sarah?” He pushed it slightly ajar.

“Marc?”

He entered her room. “How you doing, honey?”

Tears coursed down her cheeks. “My baby’s two weeks old, and he’s never met me. I’ve never held him. What if he doesn’t want me now? You’ve spent more time with him than I have.”

He took her hand in both of his. “He has been getting to know you, even if you couldn’t see him.”

She blinked back her tears. “What? How?”

“I got a t-shirt from your bedroom that you had worn, and we cut it up, and we put it in the incubator with him.”

Her jaw dropped. “You did? That’s a great idea.”

“I also took Mike’s phone. I took all the voice messages from you on it, put them onto a mini recorder and connected them into a fifteen-minute loop, so he could hear your voice. One of them was quite a long one. Remember when you were talking to him several months ago about your trip to DisneyWorld?”

“That wasn’t a message!”

“I know. He picked up while you were leaving the message and it recorded your whole conversation. I guess he kept it.”

“Why would he do that?”

“I don’t know. He liked hearing it, I guess. You were both laughing a lot. Anyway, it had both your voices on it, so with that one, and several other messages from you, I was able to make a nice loop. They play it for him about forty-five minutes at a time. You can change the recording now, it you want. You can also record your heartbeat to leave with him.”

“Marc, that’s amazing. How did you come up with that?”

He shrugged. “It wasn’t me, actually. It’s this nurse in the NICU, Kendall. They were her ideas. Or the hospital’s. Anyway, she told me. She’s incredible.”

Sarah narrowed her eyes. “She sounds incredible. You sound smitten.”

“Am not.” He stood and lifted his chin. “So you want to go see him or not?”

She sniffled, glanced down at herself. “I look awful.”

“Like Jameson will care.”

“Maybe I should eat something first. I feel lightheaded.”

“That’s probably a good idea. I’ll go find something.”

As he left her room to hunt down some food, he prayed she wasn’t simply stalling.

Moments later, he stuffed down a chuckle at the face she made at the food, if you could call it that, on the tray he placed on the wheeled table.

“What is this supposed to be?”

He peered over her plate. “The dietitian said it’s what you’re allowed to eat. I’m not really sure what it is.”

She picked up the fork and began pushing the gray entrée around.

Pulling up a wooden chair with an orange cushion, he dropped into it. “How are you feeling otherwise?”

“Better, I suppose. I’ll be glad when all these tubes are out of me.

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